How to Add a PayPal Shopping Cart to Your WordPress Blog

If you plan on establishing a professional blog, utilizing it as a platform for advertising relevant goods or services is one of the most effective ways to monetize your website. After spending a considerable amount of time blogging, you have likely acquired enough knowledge and expertise to venture into online business. For instance, you might choose to publish an e-book that delves deeply into your niche, in which case you will likely want to promote and sell it through your blog. Whether your intention is to sell an e-book or any other type of product through your blog, the PayPal platform offers all the necessary tools to create a basic online store for accepting payments and issuing invoices. Best of all, it is free to incorporate a basic PayPal shopping cart into your WordPress blog. The easiest method to achieve this is by using a suitable plugin, and for the purpose of this guide, we will be utilizing the popular WordPress Easy PayPal Shopping Cart.

1. Access your administrator dashboard, proceed to Plugins > Add New, and search for the aforementioned plugin. Once you have downloaded and installed it, activate the plugin. Upon activation, a new section titled “Cart Orders” will appear on the administrator dashboard sidebar, as well as a new submenu in the Settings section titled “WP Shopping Cart.”
2. To create a new item to sell using PayPal, navigate to Settings > WP Shopping Cart. Ensure that you accurately enter your PayPal email address. Fill in the other required details and enter the standard three-letter currency code in the Currency field. Click on “Update Options” to save your changes.
   
3. Add the services or products you wish to sell on a new or existing page or post. Enter any textual content or images that describe the product and then include the shopping cart button using the following shortcode: [wp_cart_button name=”PRODUCT-NAME” price=”PRODUCT-PRICE”] Replace PRODUCT_NAME with the name of your product and PRODUCT_PRICE with its price. Save and publish the post or page.
4. Navigate to Appearance > Widgets and drag the WP PayPal Shopping Cart widget to the desired widget area in the right column. Click “Save” to save your changes. Visitors to your website should now see something similar to what is displayed in the screenshot below: